


I'm here for you, (s)he said

by sprx77



Category: Naruto
Genre: And ultimately, Anxiety, Comfort, Cuddling, Disassociation, Established Relationship, Fluff, Fuck the fourth shinobi war lmao, Guys this is so fucking soft, I swear, Light Angst, Multi, Not Canon Compliant, Sasuke gets lost in his own head, and his datemates cuddle him, but like not EVEN canon levels of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:53:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28233465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprx77/pseuds/sprx77
Summary: Sasuke gets lost in his own head for a bit, but Sakura and Naruto are there to pull him into the man he wants to be-- and into the safe place between them.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke/Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 5
Kudos: 73
Collections: Secret Snipers Exchange 2020





	I'm here for you, (s)he said

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadyRachael](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyRachael/gifts).



> Hi! I actually wrote this before I knew who my recipient was-- because I didn't want to claim a prompt and then run out of spoons, I wrote it in its entirety before officially claiming. Rachael, I hope you like it! I was stoked to click on your bookmarks for this fandom and find two of mine. You said Naruto (any) so I hope you like this piece with my favorite ship/ot3. It can probably be read as ninja platonic, if you like; teams are Just Like That sometimes. In my heart they're married. Please enjoy!

It's twenty minutes until four am, that accusing time where going to bed means getting up past noon, if you want something like adequate hours of rest, and all Sasuke can do is stare blurry-eyed at the ceiling and try not to panic too loudly.  
  
There's nothing to even panic about. He's as safe as he's ever been, in bed with all the parts of team seven that he can stand, in the middle of a well-guarded village. Physically, he's fine; if one is willing to discount the rabbit-fast jerking of his heart and the incessant gravity on all his organs, feeling like some giant is stepping on his chest.  
  
Emotionally, though? It’s like he built the core stones of himself up on blind revenge, and when that foundation came down-- one way or another-- he found himself hollow. When that hate-fueled fantasy had been carved out of him, what was left? Sometimes he bargains for a day's worth of smiles and leans onto the steady framework of Naruto and Sakura's more stable castles, stonework built between them to keep each other's structures standing if ever one should fall.  
  
Sometimes it's easy, to settle into familiar haughtiness, the shape of a personality that developed in absence of his higher processing, an accident of habit when his attention was focused so ardently on a bloody and cathartic fantasy.  
  
He is who he is; arrogant and oft-unamused, impatient and eager to prove himself. He reaches for the biting quip without regard for if it hurts; he finds himself following behind Naruto's sunlight and Sakura's unflinching oak like a half-feral nincat, longing for and attached to a warm beam of light to sleep in, a steady branch under him when his guard is down.  
  
Sometimes, very rarely, he forgets who he is. When others aren't watching, when all those little things seem to unerringly fail at adding up into a whole person-- who is he then?  
  
A collection of half-assed likes and dislikes? Someone with barely any goals, who can't say he's a brother or an uncle or even a son, any of those other casual ties that keep someone somewhere. Is he even real at all? What is Sasuke when he's not speaking, fighting, _doing_? If he's not affecting the world, if he's not 'this person sparring with Sakura' or 'the man kissing Naruto' or even 'that shinobi drinking from a skein of water', then who is he? What is he?  
  
The Sasuke who sits like a lifeless thing on their bed isn't anything. There are no threads to ground him, no ties to bind him save for the precious few he's hewn from an unkind life against all odds, cradled precious and frayed against his chest through it all.  
  
He tilts his sweaty forehead into the sheet, tries to be a person instead of a thing, and breathes. Just breathes. Maybe there's something more than a body here, more than the flesh he's piloting; a sentient thing cobbled together from nerves and veins, some nuanced organism that is more than the sum of its parts and the bland miracle of life.  
  
He's conscious, despite his best efforts. Maybe if he summons a snake it can poison him into some facsimile of sleep. It's almost worth what Sakura would do to him in the morning. He tilts his head enough to stare blearily with one eye at her sleeping form, soft shadows over a softer form, blanket drawn over waist, skin smudged and hair muted in the darkness.  
  
It would have to be a coma, though, with his built up immunity to all the clan's venoms, and that's not something he could end on his own. Nor would it be at all restful. He is not quite beyond the point of caring.  
  
Sakura is closest to him and he listens to her breathing in the dark. No, he won't medicate himself into a semblance of unconsciousness. He reaches out with what dregs of energy he has and tugs the comforter higher for her, until it sits beneath her ribs.  
  
You would think Sakura would be the snuggest sleeper of them, bundling up against every draft. She's certainly the coldest when awake, pressing icy toes into Naruto's thigh as he shrieks in protest, wearing blankets around her shoulders and across her lap, always sensitive to and complaining over the most minute temperature fluctuations within the house.  
  
But it's Naruto who sleeps with the covers pulled up to his chin, tan skin and golden hair barely visible on his pillow. He burrows deep and tight into the weight and warmth, every night without fail. Sakura is the one who could kick free of blankets, frowning moodily in her sleep at the heat, only to curl up against one of them as soon as the air kicked on again-- or, worse, yank away their blankets with blind avarice, not nearly awake enough to judge or care if her gain is fed by their sudden lack. As for the two of them, awake or asleep, they are helpless to resist her monstrous strength, untempered in her slumbering state. At least, not without tearing the fabric.  
  
Once more Sasuke is the only normal one on his own team; he doesn't radiate heat like Naruto, nor seek it out and leech it away like Sakura. He keeps to himself with his own blanket and isn't really bothered by small changes in ambient warmth.  
  
(Naruto and Sakura would say otherwise, of course, loudly and with great protest. Sasuke needs at least two pillows to sleep easily, can't stand to have his feet uncovered, and will seek them out if they're too far away-- not for warmth but for comfort. He tosses and turns if he's not cuddling, and half the time if he goes to sleep without it, he captures someone in his sleep and nuzzles into them anyway.)  
  
He swallows hard in the dark. Naruto's hand is stretching out of his great fluffy mound of blankets, a little. Sakura's fingertips are stretched toward it, though she's moved a little in her sleep. They fell asleep holding hands.  
  
He's never more lonely than when they're right here, when all it would take is one word or sharp movement and they'd be awake and attentive to him, coaxing him down from whatever cliff he's managed to scale in his abject panic; never more alone than when he can't bring himself to disturb them, the necessary request budding up in his throat like acid, one word that, naturally, feels so impossible to say, the reluctance a yawning canyon of distance more insurmountable than any number of miles.

(Sakura always sprawls; Naruto pokes her stomach and calls her a starfish. Sasuke smirks a laugh and wonders how someone who falls asleep so petite can stretch out like an Akimichi in her sleep. Sakura oft takes offense to any notion that she's small, let alone smaller than them, and asks if 'someone so small could do _this_ ', inevitably ending in some contest of strength that they lose, and lose badly. Naruto smiles like he can't believe they share a home with him, let alone a bed, even if his hair is mussed from being smacked with a pillow or from having his face rubbed into the bedding. Sasuke can't help the smug curl of satisfaction in his ribs when he sees them, together and safely trapped where he can watch them both, not going anywhere. It's possessive and perhaps unhealthy, the way he wants to preen at how they settle into their daily bedtime routines, like he's tricked them somehow-- tricked them into loving him, into staying. Pride stretches like a satiated cat and naps on the heels of victory within him, every night.)  
  
(It feels like a thrill, a conquest. Like a fight that took him all over a forest and crashed down into hair-close misses and a deluge of spent chakra, like blood on the air but he's the one left standing-- a hard-won triumph thrumming in his veins, success and victory, his heart pumping yes yes yes with life and adrenaline)

Simple. He knows how to live when his life is on the line, to fight with every breath in his body.  
  
He knows how to _be_ when he has them to talk to, to move around, when there's a Sasuke -shaped hole to fill that he can stretch into the edges of without trying.  
  
It's harder when he's alone in the dark, and he feels like a stiff wind could scatter him to the corners of the map.  
  
When he's somehow so alone while they're right there next to him.

The thundering beat of his own heart is so loud that he almost doesn’t hear her; the unexpected words nevertheless cut through everything in a smooth stroke, an arrow slicing past anxiety and thundering pulse to settle the small, thrashing animal within.

“Stop thinking so hard.” Sakura drools into her pillow, more than half-slurring. “I can hear you in my dreams.”

Black eyes slit over to her, uncovered stretches of pale skin catching moonlight. His face feels like his own for a moment; angular, tired, faintly smirking. It’s less something he’s wearing and more a part of him, simple and easy.

“Tell me more about your dreams of me,” He says, voice almost as groggy as he feels. “What am I wearing?”

She snorts gracelessly, a huff that briefly moves her bangs off the pillow. He clocks the phantom feel of a fist to the shoulder, so real it makes him blink; she hasn’t moved at all, he just knows her. She would smack him if she were even the smallest bit more awake.

Naruto shifts to hear them; he must pick up on something-- her mumbled concern stretching over, or Sasuke’s tense shape despite his exhaustion-- because he turns under his castle of comforters.

“C’mere,” He mutters sleepily, an elegant and laughably impractical solution, but Sakura takes it as gospel and is already moving before Sasuke can dismiss it. He is given the choice to move out of her way or get crushed.

She shifts heavily to make room, Naruto reaching to pull Sasuke into the middle. He still doesn’t move fast enough, limbs stiff with fatigue, and catches an elbow to his stomach for his troubles.

“Oof.” Sakura rolls past him mercilessly as he’s violently thrust back into the mortal prison of his own body.

They make room for him. Effortlessly, they create that space between them, and Sasuke slides into it. He doesn’t have to figure it out who he is or should be; there’s a space for him here, defined so easily by the edges they make, the outline of who he is and can be with them by his sides.  
  
Sakura presses her cold toes into his calf mercilessly. Naruto begins a quiet little half-snore. Something about the night seems a little softer. Sakura’s cheek presses into his shoulder, which will inevitably collect drool by the morning. Naruto’s forearm curls across his chest, curving at the elbow, fingers resting warm against his neck.

His blanket becomes a comforting weight. The new space he takes up in the sheets is cool, welcoming to his legs and feet. His pillow is wedged between their two at the perfect height, or something, because he turns his face into it and sleep bludgeons him with all the strength and speed of Lee’s hammerfist, about as subtle as an Inuzuka.

Finally, after _hours_ , contentment sinks in. 

Something settles in his chest and his body slumps like a puppet, chakra strings cut.

When he wakes up, so many hours later, it’s to blonde hair tickling his chin and Sakura’s legs wrapped around his, most of his blanket claimed for her horde and Naruto’s body heat more than making up for the lack, and with the afternoon sun drifting lazily through their bedroom.

**Author's Note:**

> [Find me on tumblr](https://definitelynotaminion.tumblr.com/)


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